In the 1920s, in an Italian villa called Il Piacere, the playwright Galeazzo D'Ascanio lived for his muse and mistress, Celia Sands. The night before she was to perform the leading role in his most original play, Celia disappeared. Now, 60 years later, his grandson is about to stage the play - and a promising young actress, named Celia is to star.

It's late summer, war is raging, and families are torn apart by divided loyalties and deadly secrets. In this complex and dangerous time, a young French Canadian lieutenant is captured and billeted with a Long Island family, an unwilling and unwelcome guest. As he begins to pitch in with the never-ending household tasks and farm chores, Jean-Philippe de Sabran finds himself drawn to the daughter of the house. Slowly, Lydia Wilde comes to lean on Jean-Philippe,...